Entertainment

Parents, Kids Have Kind Words for Each Other on Facebook

Your kids are more likely to initiate friending you on Facebook when they're young, suggests a new study from Facebook. Data gathered by the social networking giant shows 65% of 13-year-olds initiate of friendships with their parents on the social network. That figure drops to about 40% by the time they reach their early to mid-twenties. You'll have to wait until your kids are in their early forties before they start to friend you first (50%) again on Facebook.

Parents and kids comment about the same amount when kids are young. As the child gets older, parents comment more often — perhaps this is because younger people post more often than their parents, writes Moira Burke, an analyst in the study for Facebook.

Regardless of who friends who first, parents and their children (whatever age they are — even adults) have lots of kind sentiments for each other on the social network.

Parents are proud of their children on Facebook and their children show gratitude, with the words "thank you" being common. Grandchildren are a big topic of conversation for parents and their adult children, especially with mothers and daughters. Non-English terms of endearment were common too, in Spanish and Tagalog.

Daughters will post just as much to their parents' Facebook pages as the parents post to theirs. Sons, on the other hand, are less likely to engage with parents, even if they're Facebook friends. Don't worry though, this lack of engagement isn't forever — the likelihood of your kids interacting with you on Facebook increases for both males and females as they get older.

Mothers are more likely to leave comments about being safe on their son's pages than their daughters.

"Even on Facebook, stereotypical 'mothering' occurs with sons. Mothers frequently say be careful or be safe to their boys (but not as often to their girls), with a few don't forgets and you need tos sprinkled in for good measure," wrote Moira Burke, the author of the Facebook post about this recent research.

The data collected also shows which words are most commonly said to parents and sons and daughters. For daughters, words like "beautiful," "all grown," and "baby" are common. For sons, words and terms such as "good luck," "money," and "game" are common. For mothers you might see terms like, "LOVE U MOM," and for fathers, "happy anniversary," and "support."

Facebook gathered this information by investigating "anonymized and automatically processed posts and comments by people self-identified as parents and children" during the past two months.

What do you and your family members talk about on Facebook? Tell us in the comments.

Mashable
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